News Research Journal

Academic critics of news media performance in reporting poll results may miss the point of AAPOR's disclosure standards. As convenient as the model may be, its benefits may be outweighed by its lack of realism in the journalistic world.

After 164 years, the Black press is alive and well, and not particularly concerned that mainstream white papers will drive them out of business. Editors and publishers of African-American newspapers say they reach a different market than the mainstream press. The main problem, they say, is not market, but advertising revenue.

“Women's issues” receive more attention on editorial pages now than in 1980. But women editorial page writers and editors do not respond in a lock-step pattern on women's issues, although gender is a stronger predictor of editorial position than age, newspaper circulation or job title.

Journalists reporting on natural disasters do not make full use of scientific and technical experts whose information might minimize harm to the public. Instead, this study finds newspaper accounts full of government voices, which drown out other – perhaps more useful and authoritative – voices in the news.

Who sets the local agenda - newspapers or the public? Community papers in the midst of a local controversy are subject to many pressures to report from the community's point of view rather than from some professional standard of “objectivity” which may be exercised more freely by distant metro papers in more pluralistic settings.

There are painfully few nonwhites among the ranks of top newspaper executives. Those who have survived in the business long enough to become assistant managing editors or higher frankly discuss the barriers they encountered on the way up, and the blows that knocked some minority colleagues off the ladder.

A case study of a mid-sized Midwestern paper shows that circulation losses don't necessarily result when copy prices are increased. Price increases for circulation need not be feared by local monopoly publishers, if those increases are reasonable.

Nut graf summary decks, those conversational and concise synopses of the news that are neither text nor headlines, appeal to a broad range of readers and nonreaders. Both established older readers and younger nonsubscribers like the quick-read aspects of nut graf decks as an easy way to make sense of the news,

Many entry-level newspaper staffers come from college journalism programs and start their newspapering careers at college papers. A census of all newspapers at ACEJMC-accredited schools finds twice as many minorities in college newspaper newsrooms as in the industry, but few in top positions.

Do info graphics improve reader understanding? The results are mixed. In this experiment, the presence of an informational graphic appeared to increase recall of specific information only slightly. In one instance, distorted graphic information may have misled readers.

Good news and bad news: This study finds increased newspaper coverage of black Americans, but that content remains highly stereotypical, with little attempt to get behind events at underlying causes – a key Kerner Commission recommendation.